Hey Adam....This is an excerpt from a talk by a good oldtimer named Chuck C. He did this series of talks they turned into a book called A New Pair of Glasses. I wouldn't post it here if I didn't think you might get something out of it. I hope you do.

And thinking a little about the problem, I have to think a little about a Texan who was the first chap that sobered up in Houston. I guess he has close to, if not already, thirty-five years sobriety. He's half a Texan wide and a Texan-and-a-half tall.

And he tells this story. He says if youre going to solve a problem, it helps if you know what the problem is. For instance, says he, "I've always been afraid of dogs. Some little 'ol girl comes walkin' down the sidewalk, with a great dane on the leash,and says she's not afraid of him at all. (A poodle runs out, and I take off!)" He's over six feet tall-I can just see him running from a poodle! He says this caused him a lot of embarrassment in his life, and it finally became necessary for him to look at the reason that he was afraid of dogs. And he looked and looked, and he started to turn the pages of his life back, and he got clear back to where he was seven years old. He remembered that when he was seven a little dog bit him, and that was the reason he was afraid of dogs. But he said that didn't completely satisfy him. So he looked at it again, and he saw that the reason the dog bit him was that he was chasing the little girl at the time. Now says he, "All my life I've been chasin' women and gettin' in trouble and runnin' from dogs, and dogs never were my problem in the first place!" So he says it helps to know the problem. I think it helps to know the problem.

I'm going to tell you what I think the problem is, and I'm going to tell you what I think the solution is. There will be some of you that will not agree with my thinking, and that's perfectly alright. But if I talk, I have to say it as I see it. Our immediate problem when we came here was booze. Alcohol. That's the thing that ran us in here. It ran me here in a hurry after twenty-five years, because I had used every resource I had, and I had lost the battle. So I got here at the ripe old age of forty-three, a failure in every department of life; failure as a husband, a father, a businessman, a man and a drunk. I had run out of everything, including people, places, things, money, whiskey and home and everything else. And there wasn't any place else for me to go but here. However, on my last trip out I had a very great, good fortune. The bottle killed me! The bottle beat me to death, beat me into total and absolute nothingness, and only then could I come to investigate Alcoholics Anonymous.

Up until that time there was no way that anybody could have talked me into coming here. As long as I had the power of choice, my choice was never to come to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I never came until I had lost everything, including the power of choice. So I would say to you that the greatest single event that has ever happened in my life, and I'm seventy-two years old, happened in January, 1946,when the bottle beat me to death. Had it been necessary for me to consciously surrender the first time, I would have died without coming to this program. There was no way that I could surrender. I had never admitted defeat one time in forty-three years of life. Not to God, man, woman or the Devil. The word "surrender" wasnt in my vocabulary. It had been bred out of me for generations.So, thank a GOD, on my last trip out, the bottle did it for me. The road block was burned out, and I got to the program in a state of total abandonment of self. And everything in the fifth chapter of the book Alcoholics Anonymous was something I wanted to do, the first time I ever heard it. The very first night, when I heard Chapter Five read, everything in it was something I wanted to do. And I'm certain it was because of the total state of abandonment of self in which I got here.

Now, there was one thing that I didn't think I could do, and that was Step Three, and it wasn't because I didn't want to. I had no objection to Step Three. I would have turned my will and my life over to a jackass, if I could have gotten rid of me. But, where it says we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him, I didn't think that this was possible for anybody like me, because I didn't think it was cricket to believe that I could give the mess that was me to anybody, let alone to God. I wouldn't have taken me with a large dowry, and I didn't figure God liked me any better than I did, and I hated my guts. So I let it lay. I just let it lay. I picked up the last third of Step Twelve, and practiced these principles in all of my affairs."After attending a meeting every night for six months, I discovered that I was sober and had been without a drink or a pill for six months. This was a discovery, because I'd attended everyone of those meetings with a great fear upon me that I couldn't have this thing, that I didn't have enough left physically or mentally to get it. But after six months meeting every night, I discovered that I was and had been all the time.

Then I started giving a little attention to Step Three, because I was thinking, Well maybe theres some way that I could come to feel that God would take a package like mine. But I couldnt get any solution to the thing. I was messin with it for quite a little while, and finally it occurred to me, Youre a Father. Then I started conjuring up the most heinous crimes I could imagine, and laying them on these two boys of mine. I let my imagination go crazy, buildin' the worst possible kind of crimes anybody could perpetrate, and when I'd done I would say to myself, "Now,would this keep me from wanting to see my boys? Would these things make me want to cast them into perdition, to burn for eternity? And I had to say No, I couldnt do it. No way could I, regardless of what they did, no way could I assign them to Hell. So I came to believe that maybe the Heavenly Father, being a goodguy, and me an evil one, maybe he would forgive me. And I got comfortable. But it had to come through that kind of procedure with me.

Now the funny part of it is that when I discovered that I'd been sober for six months, I had to get lost in trying to give this thing to alcoholics, because they had given it to me. Drunks had given it to me. I lost myself working with drunks, and after a while I had another discovery, that something had happened in our household. A year before, Mrs. C. was divorcing me, the kids wouldn't come home when I was around, the boss-man was going to throw me through the window if I ever stepped foot in the plant again, I had no health, no sanity, no home, no job, no nothing, and it appeared that the war was over. Now, the household was living like kittens. And that was a good discovery. It was about a year after I got here. Another six to eight months went by, and I made another discovery, and that was that I was still trying to clean up my desk at the office.

But here I was, still trying to clean up my desk at the office, and business was good. It was plum good. That was a pretty good discovery! Then another year went by, and I discovered that my Being was better than anything that I had ever dreamed of in my life. My looking-glass, being myself, was better than anything that I ever dreamed of. And that was a good discovery.And now five, maybe six years have passed, and I made another discovery, which I believe to be the Great Discovery. When we make this discovery, the search is over and life begins-life isn't over, life just begins. Really! And this discovery was that I was never alone anymore. I, who had waked alone for forty-three years, totally alone, I was never alone anymore. I had a God of my very own. And where I am, He is. Im often by myself, but never alone.

And this has been the way it's beenever since the discovery, and it's the way it was before the discovery. Because I hadn't been alone since my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I believe that this program of ours the Alcoholics Anonymous program, is a program of uncovering, discovering, and discarding.That's the AA program to me. Uncovering, Discovering, and Discarding.The first nine steps of the program are the uncovering steps, clearing away the wreckage of the past. Squeezing us out of ourselves, ego-wise; to get rid of the human ego, temporarily, because we never get rid of it totally, in my opinion. I am convinced that nobody can honestly take the first nine steps in this program without making the discovery that something has happened, and it's terrific!

Because 'when we honestly apply the first nine steps of this program ego is temporarily gone. Now I am convinced in my own mind, totally and completely convinced from my toenails to the top of my longest hair, that there's only one problem in this life. One problem that includes all problems, and one answer that includes all answers. Now that's oversimplification, isn't it? One problem that includes all problems, and one answer that includes all answers. I am totally convinced that the only roadblock between me and you and me and my God is the human ego. The only roadblock there is. I further believe that the best definition youll ever hear of human ego is, The feeling of conscious separation from. The feeling of conscious separation from. From what? From everything. From God. (I like to use three words: Life, Good,God, which to me are synonymous words.) Conscious separation from God, from each other, and eventually from ourselves. That is the thing that says to me, Here are my big me, little me, smart  me, dumb me, rich me, poor me against the whole world. Ive got to out think, out perform, and out-maneuver in order to eke out amiserable living out of an unfriendly universe.

That's what they laid on me as a kid. The very cliches of life, "The early bird gets the worm" The Devil takes the hindmost". "You've got to be there firstest with the mostest" and build on that premise. Here am I against the whole world. I've got to out-think, out-perform and out-maneuver. Consciously separated from each other and from God. I think that's the greatest roadblock there is, the only one, as a matter of fact, the only roadblock there is between me and you and me and my God. And thats the human ego. The seat of all obsessions of the mind. Thats where they come from.

It is also my total conviction that there is no possibility under Heaven to satisfy the human ego. Its a divine impossibility. I like to sit up there in my big chair (Many of you have seen it. Some of you have sat in it for a minute, but I won't let you sit in it much longer!), and I look down over that little town, Laguna Beach, to the beautiful shoreline and the channel (right straight in front of my chair is Avalon) to Catalina Island. It's about thirty-four or thirty-five miles from where I live. I look down at that water, that channel, and that thirty-five miles is just the top of it. It's deep, too. And I say to myself, "Suppose that entire channel was bourbon whiskey."Now, that's quite a few drinks! Would that satisfy my obsession for whiskey? And I have to say no. The whole damn thing could not satisfy my obsession to drink, because when I get started drinking, before long I'm flat on my back in bed, drinking the clock around, and every time I open my eyes I drink, and there's no way to satisfy that obsession. No way.

Now suppose my obsession had been for money instead of drinking. How about that? It's totally impossible to satisfy an obsession for dough. I had a client through many years who lived in Phoenix. He was a Syrian named Eddy who had gone from one head of lettuce to thirty-five million bucks, and he was one of the poorest men I ever saw. Because unfortunately, be had a partner in one of his business enterprises,which happened to be oil, and this old boy was worth one-hundred and fifty million.They had a suite in the Jonathan Club, most beautiful thing you ever looked at in your life, all paneled with the finest wood in the world, gun racks and elephant tusks all over it, and feet and gazelles and everything else. And when I'd be sitting there with the two of them, Eddy was trying to get under the davenport. Poor thing, he had only thirty-five million, and here was old Steele with one-hundred and fifty million. Poor man! Eddy use to say to me, "Charley (I was 'Charley' in business.), how can I be like you?", and I'd say, "Eddy, you can't.". He'd say, "Why?)", and I'd say, "Eddy, who needs God if you've got thirty-five million bucks?! Don't be silly! You can buy anything you want, including women, and you do. Who needs God when you've got thirty-five million bucks? You go ahead and make one hundredand fifty million, and you will, if you live. (Because everything that old boy touched turned to gold.) And when you've made one hundred and fifty million, you will have then found that it won't do for you what you have to have done inside you. And you will come to me and say, 'Charley, how can I be like you?' Then I'll tell you, and you can do it, but not until then. He'd say, "Well, talk to me about it, anyway." And we'd drive all over the state of Arizona, talking just like we'll be talking here. But poor Eddy didn't make his one hundred and fifty; he got so many things in his head that it exploded. He was ten years younger than I, and he's been gone five or six years. He died. Impossible to satisfy an obsession for money.

Suppose my obsession had been for power. How about that? No possibility. Witness Watergate; there's a nice power struggle. It's absolutely impossible to satisfy an obsession for power. If you were President of the United States, no good, because every dictator in the world has more power than our President. Old Genghis Khan had more than all of them. So, no way.

What about women? I started to say sex, but that brings up a bad connotation! (I've been getting invitations, lately, to gab and talk to the deviates, and God bless me, I can't hardly make it. So far I've been able to sort of have some other thing to do, or get something else to do.) So, let's say women. Suppose my obsession had been for women. And suppose that I had been the greatest lothario of all times, and suppose I had captured every chick I set out to catch, but one. Now at my age that would be a pretty good size army, don't you think? Would they satifsy my obsession for women? Uh-uh, This one kills me! The one I can't get kills me dead. So, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Weve gotto get rid of the obsessions of the mind. And in order to get rid of the obsessions of the mind, we have to be rid of the ego, because thats where they come from. I want, I dont want, I like, I dont like, I.-I.-I.-I.-I. Thats it.

Great post Adam, ... thank you for taking the time to share it ...


I feel my 'relationship' with God is much better when I consider myself as the 'child' and He the Father ... and as a common father/child relationship goes, the father teaches and is 'understanding and forgiving' when we fail to be the perfect child ... Personally?, ... I can relate to the parable of the 'prodigal son' story in the Big BB ... where the kid goes off with his inheritance to 'live it up' ... so he left home and did exactly that ... spent his fortune on having fun ... found himself feeding pigs and so hungry he was eating their food ...

He decided to go back home and ask if he could come work at his dad's place ... his dad was so thrilled just to see him return, he forgave him for his stupidity and had a feast prepared in his honor, to celebrate the event ... (the kid's brother was pissed, if I recall this right, but that was yet another lesson we are to learn from the story) ...

So, my point is ... ... ... this story gives me reason to have no fear of repercussions from Father, only joy from Him that I would even take a moment of my time to talk to Him through prayer ... and to honor His name when ever the opportunity arises, like now ...


Love ya and God Bless,
Pappy